It will identify energy systems that Canada should implement over the next few decades to achieve 80 per cent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and minimize other environmental impacts while maximizing economic and social benefits. It will include an analysis of the potential to create new business and employment opportunities in Canada to meet the growing demand for “greener” energy production.

The Trottier Energy Futures Project will start with a comprehensive evaluation of Canada’s current energy systems (including electricity, transportation, process, and heating systems). It will then identify integrated solutions to ensure the sustainability of Canada’s energy systems. This work will include a full assessment of associated
technical, environmental, economic, and social implications. It will also identify any necessary changes in public policy and regulations.

Fossil fuel production and consumption account for 82% of Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and those emissions are among the world’s highest per capita. To make the transition to a sustainable energy system, the country will have to use energy much more efficiently and rely much more heavily on low-carbon or carbon-free energy sources.

A different kind of scenario

But while energy efficiency and alternative energy sources are priorities in any response to climate change, a deep, sustained reduction in greenhouse gases calls for a different kind of emissions reduction scenario.

Existing technologies can reduce GHG emissions by 20 to 50%. An 80% reduction target is another story. The solutions will still be technological. Cost-effective implementation will still be essential. But the deeper target goes beyond a focus on efficiency and clean energy production, into the realm of the underlying designs and technologies that give rise to energy demand in the first place. It leads to questions like:

How the layout of our cities supports walking, biking, and transit, or requires more travel in personal vehicles

How homes are sited and designed to minimize energy use

How industries work to minimize shipping, or to produce the highest-value goods for the least energy intensity.

The 80% target

Using a “business as usual” or reference scenario to project historical trends into the future, Canada would produce more than 700 million tonnes (megatonnes, or Mt) of carbon dioxide in 2050. So an 80% reduction target would mean eliminating more emissions than Canada currently produces. Standard emissions projections show continuing growth in the oil and gas and transportation sectors, and addressing these pressures will be the key to discovering how a low-carbon scenario can work for Canada.

Sustainability

The Trottier Energy Futures Project’s mandate is to map out a future energy system that is both low-carbon and sustainable. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they aren’t identical: With the possible exception of energy efficiency, no low-carbon technology can be considered entirely sustainable, after fully accounting for its life cycle impacts.

Leading thinkers like Dr. John Robinson, executive director of the University of British Columbia Sustainability Initiative, see sustainability as an “emergent property of a conversation about the kind of world we want to live in.” That means sustainable energy can only be defined based on the behaviour of the system as a whole. Here are some of the key features that would distinguish a sustainable energy system:

No generation of waste or toxic substances

Renewable supply sources that are diverse and distributed

Fair sharing of risks and benefits across regions, communities, and generations

Resilient systems in which the vulnerability to any single failure is minimized, and the system as a whole can easily recover from shocks

Embedded social values that favour socially benign technologies and align with the sustainability principles of equity, human welfare, social justice, and self-determination.

]]>http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2016/02/23/cutting-greenhouse-gases/feed/0Canada’s Energy Futurehttp://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2016/01/23/canadas-energy-future/
http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2016/01/23/canadas-energy-future/#respondSat, 23 Jan 2016 03:58:48 +0000http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/?p=147Imagine a future with a cleaner environment, a future in which Canada is seen as a leader in innovative clean-energy solutions.

Continued use of fossil fuels as our primary energy source and the resulting greenhouse gases and other pollutants contribute to climate change and other environmental problems. Meanwhile, resource costs could continue to rise if supplies become scarce and more difficult to extract. Canada could overcome many of these problems by developing a strategy to ensure that our energy systems are secure, affordable, and free from harmful emissions and other environmental effects.

To this end, the David Suzuki Foundation and Canadian Academy of Engineering have joined to create the Trottier Energy Futures Project, named for entrepreneur, engineer, and philanthropist Lorne Trottier, whose Trottier Family Foundation provided funding for the five-year project.

With input and ideas from energy and economic experts, as well as from Canadians from all walks of life, we can create this future.

]]>http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2016/01/19/canadas-energy-future-french/feed/0NREL renewable electricity study holds good news for Canadahttp://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/05/16/nrel-renewable-electricity-study-holds-good-news-for-canada/
http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/05/16/nrel-renewable-electricity-study-holds-good-news-for-canada/#respondThu, 16 May 2013 01:47:48 +0000http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/?p=113Canada and the United States share a continent that is blessed with renewable energy potential in the form of sun and wind, biomass and geothermal, waves and rivers.

Led by NREL and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the study concluded that in combination with a more flexible electric system, renewables could supply 80 per cent of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050, using technologies that are commercially available today, while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country.

Great Resources, Plenty of Challenges

Like the United States, Canada has plenty of renewable resources, and will likely face challenges building a more flexible grid with new transmission, more responsive loads and greater storage capacity.

RE Futures, funded by U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, is a collaboration of more than 110 contributors from 35 organizations, including national laboratories, industry, universities, and non-government organizations.

The study found that the cost to the United States of getting to 80 per cent renewables would be similar to other clean energy scenarios that involve greater reliance on non-renewable sources such as nuclear, or fossil fuel with carbon capture and sequestration.

The abundance of the resource means several different combinations of renewable technologies are possible to bring reliable electricity to Americans, while slashing greenhouse emissions and water use.

A Portfolio of Renewables

Indeed, under all the 80 per cent renewable scenarios, no single renewable source accounts for more than 33 percent of total annual generation in 2050. Onshore wind comprises 20 to 33 per cent, and six different technologies—photovoltaics(PV), concentrating solar power (CSP), offshore wind, geothermal, hydropower and biomass—each supply five to 15 per cent of the total. Although the study was not set up to predict the future mix of technologies, it demonstrated that the portfolio of renewable resources is diverse and abundant. Their future deployment will depend on technological, market, policy and institutional drivers.

Of course, there are hurdles to clear and assumptions built in regarding the cost and performance of renewable technologies. The scenarios are based on incremental and evolutionary technology improvement rates, and they don’t reflect DOE actions to further reduce the cost of renewable energy sources.

While adding higher loads of wind and solar to the electricity grid poses challenges due to their variable nature, large-scale deployment of renewables will not encounter any insurmountable long-term constraints related to materials, labour or manufacturing capacity.

A major challenge is to manage periods of low demand while trying to curtail excess electricity generation—the kind that is wasted. The answer is the more flexible system that would evolve from a broad portfolio of supply- and demand-side options. That system will likely require new operating procedures, technology advances, evolving business models and new market rules.

To deliver a greater load of renewables to various corners of the U.S., additional transmission lines will be needed. This transmission expansion would also enable reserve sharing over greater distances and smoother aggregated output profiles of variable technologies such as solar and wind. The system will still require adequate capacity from dispatchable resources, such as natural gas, biomass, geothermal, concentrating solar power, hydropower and storage.

Although the RE Futures study was restricted in scope to the continental United States, some of its conclusions may be applicable to Canada. Renewable technologies such as hydropower and geothermal are also more abundant in Canada than in the U.S., and could play a greater role in a 2050 electricity scenario.

The United States and Canada share a commitment to a more sustainable future. Seizing appropriate opportunities to work together on our power systems may help both country get to a cleaner, more efficient energy future.

Trieu Mai is a member of the Energy Forecasting and Modeling Group at NREL’s Strategic Energy Analysis Center.

]]>http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/05/16/nrel-renewable-electricity-study-holds-good-news-for-canada/feed/0The urgency to build Keystonehttp://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/05/13/the-urgency-to-build-keystone/
http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/05/13/the-urgency-to-build-keystone/#respondMon, 13 May 2013 02:04:22 +0000http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/?p=134The push to build the Keystone XL pipeline may be less about a pending decision in the United States, and more about mounting fears that the opportunity to fully develop the Alberta oil sands could close forever.

Crazy as that sounds, the idea goes back to an interview by one of the pipeline’s strongest advocates, who also happens to be one of the freshest, most straightforward voices in Canadian politics.

When Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi spoke up for Keystone [download podcast] in a February 2 interview with CBC Radio’s The House,one of his more memorable arguments was that Canada has only a small time remaining to fully develop the Alberta oil sands, beforea decarbonizing energy system forces us to leave a great economic opportunity forever untapped.

A soft toss?

At first, I thought Nenshi was offering up a soft toss for green energy advocates to hit out of the ballpark. Think about it: If Henry Ford is laying waste to your established business in horse-drawn carriages, do you try for another record sales year for buggy whips, or bow to the inevitable and begin converting your stock?

If that’s the concern, the Calgary mayor has good reason to fret. As we’ve already reported on this blog, energy productivity improvements have already been the biggest contributor to Canada’s energy security over the last 40 years, saving us “more fuel and electricity today than the combined total of all the new sources of oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind and biomass energy we’ve developed over the last four decades.” That’s before any serious, sustained effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The investment community takes note

Still, it’s a stretch to suggest that Nenshi had energy productivity gains on his mind when he had his conversation with The House. It’s much more likely that he was thinking about investment managers like Jeremy Grantham, the legendary co-founder and chief investment strategist with Boston-based Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo, who are paying close attention to the prospect of a looming carbon bubble.

In mid-March, Grantham told TV host Charlie Rose that unburnable carbon will be a serious challenge—since the only plausible alternative is for fossil fuel production to drive climate change out of control. The world’s proven oil and gas reserves already far exceed the global carbon limit of 565 Gt, Grantham said, so a decision to licence Keystone would “start facilitating the flow of such utterly dangerous energy resources that we have no reasonable hope of surviving with the planet as we know it.”

Grantham is not alone in his concerns. And with institutions like HSBC Global Research, Deutsche Bank, Standard & Poor’s, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund all paying close attention to climate risk, Naheed Nenshi may be right: for anyone who’s intent on finding new markets for Alberta’s oil sands, the window may be closing fast.

For anyone with a direct stake in those projects, the next step is clear. But the public policy question is slightly different: To place Canada at the centre of the next energy economy, do we bet on the next megaproject, or on a cluster of emerging technologies that are sweeping the planet, proving themselves in the marketplace, and eroding demand for today’s product?

]]>http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/05/13/the-urgency-to-build-keystone/feed/0Low-carbon energy choices go back to underlying valueshttp://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/05/09/low-carbon-energy-choices-go-back-to-underlying-values/
http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/05/09/low-carbon-energy-choices-go-back-to-underlying-values/#respondThu, 09 May 2013 01:35:25 +0000http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/?p=103The conversation about low-carbon energy futures will only deliver effective solutions if there is a full understanding and discussion of the costs, benefits and trade-offs behind various options for transforming our energy systems.

This larger dialogue will be far more complicated and time-consuming than a linear choice between energy technologies or projects based solely on their carbon footprint. But without a wider view, even the most comprehensive response to climate change will fall short, and rapidly lose public acceptance, if it’s seen to create a new set of problems beyond the one it sets out to solve.

An 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is a daunting enough challenge in itself, and there is no doubt that we’re on a very tight timeline to transform energy systems. But for better or worse, there are no shortcuts here. The solutions we come up with will only succeed if they somehow balance the full range of sustainability criteria—economic, environmental and social.

A Question for Every Answer

The questions lurking behind the various low-carbon solutions depend on the answers we come up with.

For example, crop production for biofuels could mean a 100-fold or more increase in water use per kilometre travelled, compared to the already substantial water demand for making transportation fuels from Alberta’s oil sands. In areas with surplus water, this may not be a problem, but as the scale of biofuel production increases, and water becomes a limiting factor, the former solution may create a new problem.

The rural backlash against wind energy reflects the human tendency to react differently when a new technology shows up in our back yards, rather than 100 or even 10 kilometres away. While there is no scientific evidence that wind turbines damage human health, some people don’t like their visual impact on the landscape, or they have simmering resentments of neighbours who were able to cash in on a developer’s offer. Societal constraints on transformational change also need to be understood and managed.

As the Trottier Project showed in its Inventory of Low-Carbon Energy, Canada could tap significant new hydroelectricity reserves by 2050. But large hydro development, in particular, involves significant land use and biodiversity impacts that would have to be addressed—in full, and in public—for any project to earn a social licence to operate.

The common denominator, to paraphrase the not-quite-wily Dennis Moore of Monty Python fame, is that this redistribution of energy supply and demand will be trickier than we may have thought.

A Wider Frame

The Trottier Energy Futures Project could help frame these issues by opening a truly integrative dialogue on energy systems choices. It would begin with water and land use, biodiversity, and air pollution. It could extend to broader topics like the economics, stability and resiliency of different energy systems configurations. These concerns won’t be addressed easily or quickly, but that’s all the more reason to begin weighing the costs, benefits and trade-offs of different energy systems choices.

Along the way, we’ll find out that the conclusions we reach are different in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal, and can vary widely between urban and rural communities. That’s the point when the real conversation about values will begin—and none too soon, as the 2050 deadline for an 80 per cent greenhouse gas reduction looms ever larger.

Dr. David B. Layzell, FRSC, is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy at the University of Calgary.

]]>http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/05/09/low-carbon-energy-choices-go-back-to-underlying-values/feed/0Going to the root of the problemhttp://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/05/01/going-to-the-root-of-the-problem/
http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/05/01/going-to-the-root-of-the-problem/#respondWed, 01 May 2013 01:33:27 +0000http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/?p=100When you set out to solve a big, complex problem, it is essential to put your effort and resources where they will generate the best results.

Based on my experience as a member of the Global Studies Committee of the World Energy Council, it is evident that deriving an overall solution for the climate change challenge requires a very comprehensive approach. Such an approach requires assessment of all possible sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and all options for reducing GHG releases to the atmosphere. The overall framework has three dimensions:

Assessing all GHG sources associated with production and processing of primary energy sources to the point of final consumption, including exploration, extraction, upgrading, refining, conversion and transport to point of end use (referred to as “well to tank”), to arrive at an understanding of GHG production at each stage of this supply chain

GHG production for final consumption to meet energy-related end uses, such as burning gasoline to transport vehicles or natural gas to heat homes

All options for managing GHGs, by preventing or reducing their release to the atmosphere.

It is of special interest, and often a huge surprise, to note that GHGs are generated predominantly by consumers, not producers. For fossil fuels, in particular, only about 15 per cent of GHG emissions are generated in the entire “well to tank” process. The remaining 85 per cent occur when the fuel is burned.

For example, people are astonished when they hear that, for all the concern and controversy surrounding the Alberta oil sands, the massive process of harvesting the energy and bringing it to market only represents such a small portion of its overall ultimate impact. There is a much greater relative reduction in GHG generation when people shift from using personal vehicles to commuting by public transport, than by seeking further efficiency refinements in the oil sands production process. This is not to suggest that efficiency improvements are not important. But it is even more important to consider how energy-related services are being used by society at large, and how to make fundamental changes in the way we consume energy, especially fossil fuels.

The tough, fascinating challenge for energy engineers is that these choices are not driven solely by energy. Shifting personal mobility toward electric vehicles would reduce demand for carbon-intensive fossil fuels and point toward deployment opportunities for non-dispatchable electricity. But three things are true about the option of investing in our cities to get people out of their cars:

It’s a worthy policy goal that many of us might embrace with great enthusiasm.

It is not a strategy that traditionally receives in-depth attention from energy supply and demand modelers.

When city planners do address issues like commute times and urban sprawl, it’s often to meet objectives that have little to do with energy or GHGs. So the impact we seek in the energy sector often results from choices that may be made for other reasons.

There is much to be done in reducing GHG production, and any short-term effort is worthy. But if the end target is to reduce GHG releases by as much as 80 per cent, the dominant transformations will have to occur in the way in which we, as members of society, use energy-related services. As the Trottier Energy Futures Project has pointed out, much of that activity will be situated outside the energy sector, where the underlying demand for energy-related services originates.

One of the Trottier Project’s strengths is its mandate to look at the low-carbon challenge in a totally integrated way, then systematically select the transformation strategies that will deliver the greatest impact at lowest cost. Even with this pragmatic approach, the process of implementing a lengthy list of actions will require tremendous leadership.

But for the overall effort to deliver needed results, it will, very obviously, be necessary to expand the decision domain beyond our traditional, nearly exclusive focus on supply-side transformation options.

This broader frame is perhaps the Trottier Energy Futures Project’s most important contribution to energy policy. An expanded solution set takes a conversation that is already very complex and makes it even more so. But it also points to a different set of strategies and trade-offs that will have to be considered if public and private decision-makers are to craft a meaningful, practical response to the challenge of global climate change.

]]>http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/05/01/going-to-the-root-of-the-problem/feed/0Finding solutions in a sandbox: The role of universitieshttp://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/04/23/finding-solutions-in-a-sandbox-the-role-of-universities/
http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/2013/04/23/finding-solutions-in-a-sandbox-the-role-of-universities/#respondTue, 23 Apr 2013 01:26:10 +0000http://trottierenergyfutures.ca/?p=91Overcoming obstacles that lie on the road to a sustainable, low-carbon future is not child’s play. Yet there’s inspiration to be found in a favourite childhood gathering place.

Visualize a giant sandbox, a place in which there is the freedom to explore—creatively and collaboratively—solutions to many of today’s most pressing sustainability challenges. Imagine researchers within that sandbox, testing the technological, economic and behavioural aspects of solutions such as green buildings or bioenergy or innovative education models,with a view to applying outcomes in the wider world.

Universities can—and, in fact, must—take on the role of societal test beds for sustainability.

In this scenario, universities turn their entire physical plants into testing grounds where the institutions and their private, public and NGO partners test, study, teach, apply and share lessons learned, technologies created and policies developed.

Of course, universities are more than just buildings and utilities. The University of British Columbia is a community of some 50,000 students, staff, faculty and residents, with over 50 per cent of campus households occupied by someone who studies or works at UBC.

We are making great strides in transforming our campus into a vibrant and complete sustainable community. And, importantly, we are working at a scale that is interesting to other communities. The hope in the long term is that, because we are representative of any community, any community can become a sustainable community.

Universities are uniquely suited to this role. In most cases, they are single owner-occupiers of significant capital stock. Many of them have their own energy, water and waste systems. They are public institutions that can be a little more forgiving on payback and long-sighted on returns. They have mandates to research societal problems and create solutions. And they teach the next generation of leaders. No other organization has this mix of capabilities.

At UBC, we are exploring different aspects of the Trottier challenges. In the case of buildings, we are thinking beyond net zero to an approach we call regenerative sustainability. It might best be explained with a question: To what degree can human activity actually improve both environmental conditions and human quality of life?

In 2011, we opened the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability, a 60,000-square-foot building designed to be net-positive in seven ways—four environmental and three human—and to help seek answers to our regenerative sustainability question.

On the bioenergy front, in September 2012 we opened the Bioenergy Research and Demonstration Facility, the first demonstration of its kind in the world of a community-scale heat and power system fuelled by biomass. We are exploring smart grid applications for our campus and with other jurisdictions, including the City of Vancouver.

Our efforts in transportation have yielded significant results. For example, by putting a transit pass in the hands of every student, transit ridership nearly quadrupled in 15 years. On the education and training front, we offer more than 480 sustainability-related courses and are developing pathways so that every student, regardless of their degree program, can incorporate sustainability in their studies.

It is through students that our efforts have the greatest possible impacts. When a university acts as a societal test bed, students can integrate their learning through research and demonstration. And when those students graduate, they take their sustainability skills into the world.

Finally, experimentation is a fundamental part of university culture. Failure is seen as part of a circle of learning in which solutions are developed, demonstrated and researched. When universities act as test beds, society benefits from research, demonstration and integration that might not otherwise happen.